The bus, built to hold 90 grade-school youngsters, is too small for the same number of students of middle and high school age, parents say.
By Ward Lauren / Special to The Malibu Times
Parents expressed concern over what they consider overcrowding of the school bus bringing middle and high school students to Malibu High from Sunset Mesa and Topanga Canyon at PTA and Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District meetings last week.
District Superintendent Diane Talarico declined to comment until an investigation of the subject, which is currently underway, is completed.
Valerie Joslin, whose son, Jordan Klarenbeck, is in sixth grade, said the SMMUSD has sold 90 bus passes for the bus from Sunset Mesa. She took photographs on a day when there were only 80 students on the bus, she said, to show that it was still too crowded, with youngsters sitting three to a seat and some seated in the aisle.
Neal Abramson of the district’s transportation department said, “The bus has not been filled to capacity on any day since the first day of school. The first few days of school we always get students who ride just because they can and who have no intention to pay. After the bus passes become required, that alleviates the overcrowding, although I don’t really call it overcrowding. Let’s just call it a tighter squeeze.”
Parents pay $472 for the first student and then the bus pass price goes down from there if they have siblings, he said. Some students pay for half a bus pass because they intend only to ride in the afternoon; some in the morning. This is allowed on a case-by-case basis.
Joslin said she and many parents had spoken to Abramson who told them the attrition rate after the first week of school would probably result in five less riders.
“I said five less kids isn’t even going to matter,” Joslin said. “They need 25 less! My thought is, there are two schools on that campus, shouldn’t there be two buses, one for the high school and one for the middle school, like every other school in California?”
Eleven-year-old Alesandro Alsaro, who boards the bus at Sunset Mesa and rides it every day, said, “I’m lucky, I get on at the first stop. I usually sit with my friends in the back. We have to sit there so other people can get on. Most of the kids sit three to a seat, but when we get to Topanga, where all the people get on, some kids have to sit on their backpacks in the aisle.”
Abramson directly contradicted the allegation that students were sitting in the aisle. “We don’t allow that,” he said. “Besides, it’s illegal. Anytime a driver sees a student attempting to sit in the aisle, either the bus doesn’t move or the driver will stop the bus and instruct the student to find a seat or get kids to move over, because sometimes older students don’t let the younger ones in, or they’ll try to save seats for their friends at a later bus stop, which of course we also don’t allow.
“At no time have we ever exceeded the limits [of passengers] set forth by the Highway Patrol; we’ll never run anything illegal or unsafe in our opinion. We sell the maximum number of passes based on the ridership and the size of the bus.
“Regardless of the fact that we have a 90-passenger bus, we don’t always sell 90 bus passes. We limit the number of passes sold on each and every bus route to eliminate overcrowding.”
Parent David McGiffert of Topanga Canyon, who also phoned Abramson about the issue, said, “The point he was missing was, if those buses are designed to hold 90 people, if you’re a fourth grader in elementary school that may be true. But kids in grades six through 12 are a lot bigger; there are kids who are basically adults in size.”
Although the McGiffert family lives in Topanga Canyon, their home is within the boundary of the SMMUSD. He said they drive their 11-year-old son Evan to Sunset Mesa every morning so he can board the bus there, ahead of where the major crowding occurs, and hope he gets a seat for the ride to school.
“And there is some rowdiness by the kids, the older ones,” McGiffert said. “And when the kids get to school it takes them a while just to come down from that spin and focus on their first hour of class.”
He said school officials always hark back to the subject of money, but admitted that Abramson was careful to explain that it wasn’t just money to buy a new bus, but money for drivers’ salaries, bus maintenance and gasoline, expenses inherent with any size bus.
“But in the meantime, we’re expected tacitly to give a thousand dollars to the PTA at Malibu,” McGiffert said, “and we’re paying a large price for these bus passes. I think that in return we should at least have some kind of say on what the atmosphere is for the kids and whether or not it’s safe.